Chapter Thirty-Two
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Olline disassociated a bit after that, and really, who could blame her?
The simple fact remained: they had killed an Under Senator of Antal, and if they weren’t careful, authorities would arrest all of them for it—control chips or not. Casimir, Sofia, Isobel, Bode, and everyone else had suffered too much at that monster’s hands to be burdened by his death now.
With silent communion, the women got to work.
Sofia checked Casimir for injuries and removed every drop of Etzel’s blood from his clothes, skin, hair, under his nails, and probably even his pores. She used another of Etzel’s illegal biomagitech devices to destroy the blood stains as if they had never existed.
Isobel, meanwhile, worked on Etzel.
Her gloved hands worked with a scary fast efficiency, masking the stab wounds so they appeared to be crushing blows instead. How she managed it without magic at her disposal, Olline didn’t want to know. Watching the doctors work, Olline knew with a chilly certainty they had often cleaned up scenes like this under Etzel’s command.
For her part, Olline rested her bandaged and throbbing hands against the icy wall and closed her eyes. She called her magic, let the magma in her core leech out through her arms, down her wrists, and through her numb fingers. The power snaked from her, crawling through the walls, the mortar, the stone, and steel, on a quest. Like calling to like.
There wasn’t a lot of natural material to pull from. She wasn’t even sure if there was enough to collapse the room. That was the plan. She would make it look like a localized explosion, an accident that would match the fresh injuries Isobel was making. Olline needed to do something Under Senator Delora Peralta could sell to the press in order to keep her case, and the lawsuits, clean. Etzel Straub could not for a single second look like a victim.
What the room lacked in natural material, it made up for in wires and cables. A network of copper wires ran through the walls, keeping the room shielded and off the grid from the rest of the building, and probably all of Antal. It wasn’t ideal, given Olline had limited use of her fingers, but she could work with this.
With less delicacy and finesse than she would have liked, a running theme for her as of late, Olline pulled .
With each wire, Olline tugged out the elements that sang to her power, hauling them through the walls and weakening them. Hopefully. Olline hadn’t exactly done this before. But in her head, this plan was going to work beautifully.
The alloys and elements lay buried deep within the wall. They had to be twisted and coerced into something new, so they didn’t kill them all instantly—which would not only be bad, but embarrassing—so it took more concentration than Olline expected. Even if blood loss had not weakened her, the work would still have left her spent. Olline thanked the nanites coursing through the healing serum for keeping her as coherent as she was.
Once everything was in place, the proverbial clock began ticking. They had maybe twenty minutes before the weakened walls and support struts finally gave way, and when that happened, they definitely needed to be out of the room, preferably on a different floor. That left Olline with just enough time.
With sluggish steps, she made her way over to Casimir and Sofia as the doctor placed the materials she used into a mobile incinerator. Casimir still seemed to be in a state of shock, and Olline wasn’t sure if she should try to bring him out of it yet. Luckily, she didn’t need him to do anything for this to work, either.
She bit her lip, inhaling deeply through her nose, hoping the quiver in her stomach from the stress would lessen. It didn’t. She licked her lips and hoped she looked more confident than she felt. “Turn around,” she said, her voice a nervous squeak. “I need to fix your chip. Or, no, sorry. Not fix it, fix it, I mean break it.”
Smooth, Olline.
Casimir blinked slowly at her once, twice, before his brows furrowed in confusion. Olline stifled a sigh and offered a sympathetic smile. “Isobel, Sofia, and all the others, they’ve the newer chips. With the killware I gave Delora, once that program runs, their chips will forever be inert. Yours is different. Old. Even with Etzel dead, some other evil bastard hoping to step into his shoes could, theoretically, reboot your chip. I want—I need to make sure that never happens again.” She didn’t say she needed to do it for herself as much as him. As long as his chip had the potential to be reactivated, Olline didn’t think she could fully feel safe in his presence.
“Have we the time for that?” Isobel asked softly.
Olline nodded, straightening her shoulders and looking slightly more confident than she felt, never taking her gaze away from Casimir’s face. “It won’t take long, I promise. It’s better I do this now before anyone comes snooping.”
Sofia nodded, patted Casimir on the shoulder, and went to join her wife by the door. Both were ready to bolt as soon as she was done.
In a daze, Casimir turned around and Olline gently lifted his shirt so she could better feel where the chip was in his spine. She recalled all the schematics she had been studying before she was kidnapped, pulled her exhausted magic to the surface once more, and placed her hand on Casimir’s clammy skin.
Could Olline have waited until they were in a medical cybernetic facility to do this? Yes. Probably . But with how sideways everything had gone, she didn’t want to risk it. Until the killware went through the system, and Delora brought the legal hammer down, who was to say the hospital she took Casimir to wasn’t one in Etzel’s pocket somehow?
Taking a deep, fortifying breath, Olline shut her eyes and pressed her palm more firmly on Casimir’s back. She pulled up a mental image of the materials list she guessed would be in the chip, the biomagitech nanites that were still alive and left dormant buried deep in Casimir’s spinal column.
Warmth bloomed from her palm like feathery vines, moving through her and into Casimir, slithering into his bloodstream, and searching for the components she knew were buried beneath skin, muscle, and entwined in his nervous system. Casimir shivered under her touch, a breathy sigh puffing from his lips; the only sign he felt her power at all. With her eyes closed, she let her magic paint the picture for her. It was like a holo-projection beneath her eyelids that flashed whenever her earth abilities found a biomagitech nanite, or a minuscule part of the centuries-old control chip. With each brief pulse of light, the picture in her mind became clearer and clearer, until the outline of the control chip so firmly implanted in Casimir became visible.
Sound ceased then; she couldn’t even feel Casimir’s skin beneath her hand. She was so absorbed in identifying the microscopic hardware and software that she lost all track of her surroundings, including the time. Sweat began collecting on her brow as she concentrated, using her magic to command this part of the chip to shut down, while that nanite needed to move and block that pathway— no, not that way!
Olline took another breath; she couldn’t afford any mistakes. Even a minor error could lead to paralysis, or alter Casimir in some other way. The ultraviolet vision of her magic in her mind’s eye flickered as anxiety stabbed at her chest. Casimir was already acting oddly. Would she even know she had fucked something up before it was too late? Her magic pulsed again, warming her body, flooding her senses with flashes of the life she wanted, and may not get, if this didn’t work. A life free of working in the Government Plaza, tied down by some sneaky fine print, a life with Casimir lounging on her couch, playing with her hair as she showed him the latest orchid she’d crafted. The fear of losing that gave her weakening magic the boost it needed to finish the job, but mentally, could Olline withstand the pressure?
She risked an infinitesimal moment to calm her racing heart and steady the ethereal fingers of her magic. It brought her out of her magic enough to notice the vibration in Casimir’s back beneath her palm. Olline assumed someone was talking to him, but she was too focused to make out what anyone was saying. Pushing her hand more firmly against his back, Olline braced herself by gripping his shoulder and resting her forehead against the back of his head, taking gulping breaths of his calming scent. Olline needed a bit more time to carefully complete the delicate work and guarantee Casimir’s freedom for the rest of his life.
Which Olline hoped was long, and included her in some way, in any way.
Everything about Casimir was complicated, yet it didn’t scare Olline anymore. She didn’t feel the need to bury herself in her work and pretend she didn’t need, or didn’t want, someone in her life. No, not someone . She wanted Casimir, no matter how heavy his baggage was. She would have to remember to thank her father for that bit of wisdom, assuming Casimir could still look at her after what he had been forced to do.
Worry about that later .
She commanded the copper in the connecting wires to disconnect in their sheaths one by one by one. Olline bit her lip, searching for the last wire. She was certain there was another tangled in his spinal column somewhere, having grown with the near sentient biomagitech in his system. There was more rumbling beneath her hand, harsher, sharp little bursts this time as Casimir spoke. She screwed her eyes tighter together, focusing on her waning power and tuning out even that sensation. Iron filled her mouth as she bit her lip too hard in her concentration.
Olline’s heart was racing again, beating erratically and with hammer-blow force. Her chest was on fire, breathing painful as her ribcage constricted. The sweat on her brow was suddenly cold, the ultraviolet vision of what her magic saw as it twisted through Casimir’s body flickered.
Her power was almost completely exhausted and had pulled on her weakened body instead. Olline’s muscles trembled, her hands shaking so hard she could barely keep a hold on Casimir. She knew she was close to running on fumes, but she had thought, she had hoped . . .
She ground her teeth. Her magic wasn’t depleted yet, and she wasn’t done. There was still one active biomagitech nanite that might undo everything. And where Casimir was concerned? Olline would not take any chances.
The vibration was back again. This time, however, it wasn’t coming from her or Casimir.
The room around them was shaking. Olline’s previous work was about to come to its inevitable conclusion. Standing was becoming more and more difficult between her weakening muscles and shuddering floor. She couldn’t tune out the frantic, sharp voices of Isobel and Sofia this time, nor the soft pleas from Casimir.
Her mental image flickered again. When it snapped back on, she had the last nanite cornered. Got you, you slippery shit, she thought before crushing the biomagitech device, allowing Casimir’s body to filter it out harmlessly, with the very last ounce of her power.
With a heavy, ragged sigh that hurt more than she was willing to admit, Olline pulled herself out of the control chip.
Olline was nearly back in her own body, her own mind, when her hand slipped off Casimir. The room was shuddering, and Olline toppled over.
She would never know if she hit the ground or not. A black nothingness so complete enveloped Olline that she was aware of nothing but the sad fact that she had, once again, beaten her own record for number of blackouts in a day.
Awesome.